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TWO Fridays ago, I reached out to Joe Goldstein. The notable publicist and unofficial NBA encyclopedia had sent me a note a while back on Ossie Schectman, his Boca Raton buddy and earliest (1946-47) Knick. I promised his request would make the column the Sunday after the All-Star Game.

Then I asked Joe for a favor. That’s how we do. Sal Gerage’s health was plainly failing. I knew he and Joe went way back. Blanks needed to be filled regarding the virtuoso newspaper career of the first editor who took the time to critique my undisciplined copy, didn’t mutilate my already-flimsy confidence and pushed me hard to cultivate what he felt was an original style.

It took all of one weekend for Joe to provide the answers. They had graduated from Seward Park High School just after D-Day in June of 1944. Senior year, both had worked as copy boys for afternoon dailies.

Dissuaded by his father from following in his frozen footsteps at the Fulton Fish Market, Sal took a job at the World Telegram in the sports department. Joe was hired by the New York Sun. Six years later, the two papers merged and became the World-Telegram and Sun.

“Sal became known as a wonder boy,” e-mailed Joe, who decided around that time to become a press agent, learning the nuances by hanging around Haskell Cohen, the NBA’s first PR man.

Meanwhile, Sal became a valued sports desk person, working the midnight-to-eight lobster shift and putting out the first edition.

“When the Journal American ceased publication, Sal became the sports editor of the mixed operation,” Joe reported. “This means he was the sports editor of the new, but not-destined-to-survive paper. He was selected over Harold Claussen and Max Kase.

“The World Journal Tribune represented a fusion of seven newspapers – the Journal, the American, the Evening and Morning World, the Sun, Herald and Tribune. With the demise of the World Journal Tribune, Sal went to the Daily News, then owning a daily circulation of two million plus, as Brooklyn editor, which included Queens and Nassau/Suffolk. For a time, he was sports editor.”

Last Wednesday, on my way to Phoenix for the All-Star Game, I called Joe in Florida to thank him for the newspaper history lesson and for setting Sal’s career straight sequentially.

Two days later, Joe died at age 81 after suffering a stroke and a heart attack. At last count, 44 articles celebrated his flamboyant life and chronicled his colorful client list that featured Smokin’ Joe Frazier, who attended Tuesday’s standing-room-only service with his son, Marvis.

Addressing Frazier, Robert, the oldest of Goldstein’s three boys, declared, “You’ll always be the greatest champion in our family. You didn’t dance, you didn’t hide. You came to fight three minutes of every round.”

Robert remembers his father introduced him to Washington Post sports editor George Solomon.

“Later on, he was familiarized with Joe’s press agent credo: “Even if you can’t respect the man, respect the paper he works for.”

At Joe’s memorial service, Jeremy Schaap began his tribute saying, his (illustrious) father, Dick, had three wives and six children, so “I wasn’t left much monetarily. But I did inherit Joey Goldstein.”

Continued Jeremy: “Joey was connected everywhere, from Riyadh to the Rose Garden. When his good friend Kevin Sullivan (former Mavs and NBC PR person) became director of communications for president George W. Bush, Joe was invited to the 2007 White House Hanukkah party. How could there be a White House Hanukkah party and not Joey?

“As you’d expect, Joey had a hot date … the very married, very pregnant Anna Tiven, who at the time was not yet 30. When Joey and Anna were introduced to the president and the first lady, before the president could even extend his hand, Joey pointed at Anna’s stomach and said, loudly enough to be heard at the capitol: ‘I’m not responsible!’

“To his credit, the president instantly replied, ‘I was kinda hoping you were.’ ”

Some of Joe’s marquee accounts were Madison Square Garden, ESPN and the New York City Marathon. One of his least likely clients was the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudis’ fondness for Joey was a testament to their pragmatism – and, of course, his as well,” Jeremy said. “Joey was an avowed Zionist, but, like the Saudis, he was also an avowed capitalist.”

Dick Schaap knew Joe for about 50 years. He covered the 1984 Olympics in LA and even wrote a book about those Games, as well as every other sporting event and sports figure he ever laid his eyes on, for that matter.

“But the single most vivid memory my father took away from LA was not Mary Lou Retton on the horse, Edwin Moses in the hurdles or Carl Lewis in the sprints.

“It was Joe, who’d set up shop in the Saudi consulate in Beverly Hills, being paged on the consular P.A. by David Israel, and hearing words never uttered before or since in that particular diplomatic redoubt: ‘Mr. Israel, paging Mr. Goldstein. Mr. Israel, paging Mr. Goldstein.’ ”

Three days after Joe passed, Sal died peacefully at 5:30 (one minute shy of the number he played daily all his life) with his family by his bedside. He was buried yesterday minus any pageantry or virtual homage outside his immediate household.

This isn’t a grievance, it’s simply circumstance. Unlike Joe, who worked a big room until his dying day, Sal retired before the turn of the century and was all but forgotten. He knew the score and gracefully faded out of sight and mind.

“He used to tell me all the time, ‘When you’re out, you’re out.’ That’s the way it is,” understood his son Christopher, justly indicting an all too often self-aggrandizing profession that writes off those no longer of use to it.

That doesn’t mean Sal didn’t appreciate being appreciated. He was all smiles for weeks after John and Denis Hamill visited. Mark Kriegel’s call from Los Angeles greatly touched him. Phil Pepe came around. Joe Goldstein phoned.

There were other pupils and colleagues, of course, from the News, Post, Tablet and Sports Eye who tracked him down to pay their respects. Still, where was the heap of young writers he helped develop whose nothing stories were presented like Pulitzers?

Nobody was better at breaking someone in – starting him slow with a side bar, then a feature and then an assignment to a sport that few people paid attention to, so mistakes could be made without causing much of a fuss or mortification.

Nobody but nobody was more gifted at laying out a page or creating clever headlines.

“That was Sal’s genius,” said Pepe, a renowned, now-retired sportswriter who started under Gerage as the World Telegram’s schoolboy editor. Paul Zimmerman followed. “I remember during the 1961 World Series, I wrote a story about Clete Boyer, who turned one game around with his defense. To illustrate the story, Sal used a picture of a glove and the caption read, ‘Clete Boyer … as the Reds saw him yesterday.'”

When Paul Hornung and Alex Karras got thrown out of football for betting on games in which they weren’t involved, Sal felt their punishment was too severe. Thus, his editorial over the story: They Get Life For Passing A Red Light.

“Sal never had words with anyone his whole life,” his wife Mary said at the wake. No argument there.

Not even with columnist Dick Young who used his juice as the News’ lead lure to get management to name him sports editor. Asked to stay and be second in command, Sal stated, “I respect him but I can’t work for him.”

I swiftly seconded that emotion. Young kicked me out of the department soon after for bashing him on the radio concerning the Mets/Tom Seaver/M. Donald Grant controversy. My allegiance then was to Sal and that never changed. He was there for me when I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Never discouraging! Always encouraging!

That didn’t mean Sal let things slide. He was very demanding. He knew what he wanted from his writers, yet remained open to suggestion and compromise.

Working for him was fun; you improved and your stature grew. Working for Sal must be what it’s like playing for Mike D’Antoni; he gives guys freedom to strut their stuff and doesn’t get uptight about scrupulous misses or mistakes.

Before Sal rejected the slot, and I left for the Post break-dancing and rejoicing, I was involved in a prank that nearly got me suspended along with Dave Hirshey and Clint Roswell.

Billy Joel (“Piano Man:), Maria Muldaur (“Midnight at the Oasis”) and another singer whose name I can’t recall had just come into their own. The allure of the sultry-voiced Muldaur naturally stoked our passion to buy front-row tickets for her first concert at Carnegie Hall. Wives and girlfriends weren’t invited.

One line in one of Muldaur’s sensual songs particularly grabbed us. Undulating to the beat of our quiver, she warbled, “It ain’t the meat, it’s the motion.”

Hirshey, Roswell and Vecsey made a bet that night: First one who could sneak those words by the desk and into print would get a night out on the town at the expense of the other two.

Two days later, we were summoned onto the carpet of the managing editor who was not amused. In our first try, covering three separate sports, the three of us had snuck Muldaur’s steamy words past sleepy, sloppy late-night copy readers.

Sal was furious we’d embarrassed the paper and his sports section. However, his debonair disposition allowed him to take a joke. He got his boys off the hook.

No two ways about it; I had a man-sized crush on Sal. Loved how we didn’t hesitate to show each other our faults. Fathers and sons do that all the time without being judgmental … complete acceptance for who are we are.

Loved how he brought his work home with him, instructing his young children to edit raw copy, crop pictures and write headlines and captions; shocking that Christopher, Annette, Camille and Loretta all joined the newspaper fraternity for varying amounts of time.

Loved Sal’s enduring loyalty for his wife of 52 years. No matter what, he was madly in love with Mary till the end.

Loved watching 38 years of interaction with his famed hockey-playing grandson and their 20-year argument about who’d win their fantasy fight, Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali.

Moments before Sal died, Jimmy Vivona squeezed his hand and said, “Grandpa, you were a great example for me and for everyone else. I love you for that. You lived life the right way … and Joe Louis might’ve been able to knock out Muhammad Ali.”

Lastly, as promised, Ossie Schectman, 89, the first Knicks captain, reversed the trend and is moving north (to Tarrytown) because of health considerations for his wife, Evelyn, and his own.

He will live near his son Stu in Westchester. Ossie scored the first BAA (NBA) basket at 27 seconds (it is guessed) against the Toronto Huskies at Maple Leaf Gardens on Nov. 1, 1946.